


Change of Plans

by Sifl



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: A cute halloween story, Friendship, Gen, Happy Halloween!, there's light undertones of onesided Sharpener/Videl but only if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 14:39:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12584056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sifl/pseuds/Sifl
Summary: Videl's pals are psyched to finally hang out with her, but a change of plans threatens to put a damper on their fun and strain their friendship.A cute Halloween story with a happy ending.





	Change of Plans

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WinchesterWarrenSon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinchesterWarrenSon/gifts).



> For Winchesterwarrenson!!!! I hope you like it! Happy Halloween!!

If the hybrid clock on Sharpener’s freshly-waxed capsule car was right, it was about 9:45. And it was right. It had to be. The car was brand new and if anything was funky about it, Sharpener’s father was going to shit no less than three bricks and reduce his son’s allowance to at least that same fraction.

They’d been scheduled to leave at 9:00 sharp.

Erasa plumped her lips and fixed her lipstick in the mirror and adjusted her dress so that her Little Bo Peep costume was a little less little and a little more peep. “Hey, Sharpie,” she said, “You think Videl’s really gonna come? You know she hates costumes.”

Videl’s derision towards the cape and helmet of the iconically tragic Great Saiyaman was hardly a secret, true, but if Sharpener was being honest with himself, the lady doth protest too much. Last week, on live camera before a flaming building, she’d chewed out the caped crusader on his outfit choices for a solid twenty minutes of airtime, and then spent another ten in the limelight trying and failing to stop stuttering in front of the media when she realized they were being watched. 

In fact, Sharpener and Erasa both had found it harder and harder to pull the girl’s attention towards anything other than the Great Saiyaman, and when they pointed it out, all she ever did was talk about how much she didn’t talk about the Great Saiyaman. It was like she forgot that she had friends before that goon ever showed up, and that, no matter what, even if her father and all his money turned out to be about as real as the glitter eyelashes glued to Erasa’s eyelids, she’d still have them afterwards. It was annoying, and it called for emergency measures.

“Don’t worry,” said Sharpener. He flipped up the tinted visor of his replica Great Saiyaman helmet. “She’ll come. And if not, well, she doesn’t have to go as anything but Videl Satan, vigilante-huntress extraordinaire.” Sharpener flexed through his black spandex sleeves. “How can she resist this vigilante, huh?”

“I guess.” Erasa looked at him appraisingly. “Where did you get that, anyway?”

That brains-for-days new kid Gohan had an obvious obsession with the city’s most eccentric superhero, and Sharpener may as well have opened up some floodgates for the deluge of information the guy had given him when he’d asked what kind of duds Great Saiyaman sported. Actually, Gohan had even pulled each item up online on the library computers and all but filled Sharpener’s online shopping cart for him. Sharpener had to restrain him from going through the digital checkout.

Weird dude. Nice dude, naive dude, but definitely a _weird dude_.

“I stole it off some nerd,” Sharpener said.

Erasa smiled in that way she did when she was secretly rolling her eyes. “Wow! What a tough guy!” 

“Beat the crap out of him and took it. Shoved his head in the toilet and everything.”

“Even with your fear of germs?! People, like, poop there, you know?!”

Sharpener felt himself growing queasy at the mere thought. “You know it.”

He looked back at the clock. It read 9:48.

“Alright, that’s it.” Sharpener popped open the car door and stuck a glossy white boot onto the creamy white pavement bathed warm yellow-orange in the lamplight. A doorman bowed from his place between the two ostentatious white-and-gold doors of the Satan Mansion while the gilded likeness of Videl’s own father grinned down at him from its place on the crystalline fountain sloshing in the roundabout beyond the car.

“Hey,” said Sharpener, nowhere near as oblivious as he wanted to be in regards to his outfit, “Can we go in and see if Videl’s even coming?”

The doorman sniffed, like he knew how much money Sharpener’s dad made and found it pithy, paltry, and pitiable. “Miss Satan already has guests,” he said. “She will see to you when she has finished with them.”

“What?!” Erasa popped her head out of the open window. “Is she having a party here?”

The doorman gave a tremendous sigh and filled about fifteen seconds with a gravitas that invaded the silence of the chilly night air. “I suppose you could wait in the lobby until she is prepared for you.” He reached for the door with a white-gloved hand.

Not to be outdone, Sharpener opened the car door for Erasa and guided her inside. As they passed the doorman, he choked back the inexplicable _my dad could sue_ that something about the aura of this entire place tempted him to say. 

Sharpener’s father hated lawyers, and he hated court. He was an accountant.

“Thank you,” Sharpener said instead.

The doorman bowed and closed the door with a dignified click.

The red-carpeted lobby and spectacular overhead chandelier of the Satan mansion was a sight familiar to both Sharpener and Erasa. The white marble handrails of the grand staircase in front of them was exactly as immaculate and pristine as the day Sharpener had first seen them, back when he had just turned twelve and Videl had excitedly goaded him into sliding down them with her as a way to christen her new home.

In fact, the only unfamiliar thing about the house was the two children standing in the center of it, one of them glowering with the prettiest blue eyes Sharpener had ever seen on any human’s face, let alone a child’s, and the other with the stupidest, dopiest look ever to grace anyone’s face, ever. Well, except--

“Are you Gohan’s little brother?!” Erasa blurted. “Ohmigosh, you both look so cute!”

Admittedly, the little cowboy getup on the blue-eyed boy and the black-and-white striped outfit and fake-steel ball-and-chain on the littlest convict he’d apparently apprehended was downright adorable. The coldest part of Sharpener’s heart thawed, a little.

“Yeah, he is,” said the cowboy. “Who’re you? His other girlfriend?” Kid Eastwood rolled his eyes and cocked out his hip like Clint might’ve right before he shot a man down in cinematic spectacle.

“No way,” said Sharpener.

“Trick or treat,” said his jailbird companion, holding out a sack with maybe seven pieces of candy inside, if even. An uncomfortably small number for such a monumental candy-gathering night.

Sharpener tried not to sound like a total asshole when he snorted back a laugh.

“Goten, dummy, you’re supposed to say that when you go to someone else’s house, not when they come to you,” chastised Whoever the Kid.

“Oh,” said convict Goten, lowering his sack and staring, huge-eyed, into it. “Well, shucks.”

“Ohmigosh, sweetheart, don’t worry about it!” Erasa reached into her tiny sheep-shaped purse and produced a piece of candy that Sharpener couldn’t reconcile fitting inside there. “Here you go!”

“How did you fit that in there?!” Sharpener asked, incredulous, just as miniature Buffalo Bill blurted the same thing. They stared at one another, and then back at Erasa as she dropped the candy into the satchel of Goten, who may very well have actually been a food-restricted convict for all he was salivating.

“It’s not like it wasn’t an obvious question!” Sharpener and McWee said, together. They gaped at one another again.

Sharpener got the distinct and horrifying feeling that he was looking into some kind of weird mirror into an alternate reality.

Erasa giggled in that knowing way Sharpener dreaded. “Wow, you two are just alike,” she said.

“Yeah, right,” said Sharpener, crossing his arms.

“I’d never be caught dead in something as stupid as that Saiyadork getup!” the Lone Ranger cried.

“Great Saiyaman is cool!” insisted Goten.

Sharpener was too busy sniping Woody the Cowboy to pay him any mind. “And that Django look is any better? They’re both cliche vigilantes, pipsqueak, just with different packaging.”

“Wull, Goten and I were gonna be zombies, but then he said he wanted to match his brother, but I was still gonna be trick or treating with them, and Goten said he wanted us all to match, so I went along with it even though his brother looks super lame, and--!”

“Hey! The Great Saiyaman is super cool!” Goten insisted, his huge eyes sucking in everyone and everything like a pair of supermassive black holes.

“He looks stupid, though,” muttered the boy buckaroo.

Goten turned to his friend, his face a perfect copy of his older brother’s whenever Saiyaman was slammed in class- usually by Sharpener’s choice. “Hey! Don’t make fun of Great Saiyaman! He’s the greatest hero in the whole entire world! The greatest!”

Erasa looked at Sharpener, knowingly. “They’re just like you two,” she mouthed.

Sharpener rolled his eyes even though he knew she was right.

In front of him, though, the two boys kept bickering.

“Great Saiyaman is cool!”

“His costume’s not!”

“Is too!”

“Excuse me?” came a voice from the stairwell. “But what’s this about my costume?!”

Goten broke out into a big grin. “See?! Totally cool!”

Belatedly, Sharpener and Erasa looked up just in time to see none other than the Great Saiyaman himself standing, legs splayed and arms pompously planted on his hips, at the stairwell landing like Hercule Satan’s newest ridiculous piece of home decor. The light sloughing off the chandelier glinted off his helmet and the green, silky material of the designer dress draped inexplicably over his bodysuit.

His next pose and jazz hands were also a sight to behold.

After a moment, Sharpener got his act back together and picked his jaw up off the floor. “Are you why Videl ditched us?!”

“Does she, like, even know you’re here?!” Erasa added.

Great Saiyaman brightened and gave an unnecessary salute to the lady. “Well, I came here as a surprise to Miss Satan as I was taking these fine young gentlemen trick or treating, as it just so happens that--!”

A sudden, guttural scream and a flying flash of black and white dove down the stairs and put the Great Saiyaman in a headlock. It was Videl, clad in black leggings and a shirt covered in cotton balls.

“I’ve got you!” she screamed, face red. “Had to chase you all through my house, but I finally--!” She yanked off the orange Saiyaman helmet, her grin almost splitting her face.

Beneath the mask was just Gohan. He and Sharpener must have chosen to dress as the same thing. Sharpener chuckled to himself- he couldn’t believe he’d almost thought that was the real deal!

One of them was going to have to change.

“I wanted to know if you wanted to go trick or treating with us,” Gohan said, after a thoroughly awkward silence.

“Oh,” said Videl, releasing him. “Oh. Well, I promised Erasa and Sharpener that I’d,” she looked over and caught sight of Sharpener and his costume, and was immediately on guard again. “Ah-HA!” she cried, and Gohan had to grab her and restrain her before she leapt from the landing and probably directly onto Sharpener’s shoulders. Sharpener himself was pretty sure that would’ve killed him.

He ripped his own helmet off. “It’s me! It’s just me!”

“Ugh! You call Saiyaman stupid with hair like that?!” Wild West said.

Erasa hid a snicker.

“My hair is perfectly quaffed and conditioned, thank you, and also, it’s not purple,” retorted Sharpener. This kid was annoying.

“Um, actually my hair’s lavender, dumbbell,” Cowboy Curtis shot right back. Then, he looked at Gohan while Sharpener was still reeling. “So is she coming to trick or treat, or not?! We only have one night for this, you know?!”

“Nobody’s Saiyaman?!” Videl looked utterly lost between the two boys her age. “Really?!”

Gohan smiled sweetly. “No, we just thought it would be fun to come by,” he said. 

“Well, I mean,” Videl looked between Gohan and her two other friends. Honestly, the fact that the choice wasn’t obvious chafed, a little.

“But, uh, I understand, um,” Gohan twiddled his thumbs together and shrank into himself like the brainy little nerd he was, “if you have plans.” He glanced at Sharpener and Erasa. “Thanks for looking after my brother and Trunks,” he said.

Sharpener side-eyed the cowboy. Trunks. He’d have to remember that. That was a grade A stupid name, and ripe to be made fun of. Who named their child after underwear, anyways? The world-famous Briefs family?!

Tragic.

Meanwhile, in reality, Erasa elbowed Sharpener. “Invite him to go with us,” she said.

“We can’t take a couple of snotty kids to a party,” Sharpener argued back.

“Then let her go with them,” Erasa said. “Videl hates parties anyway. Everyone just wants to schmooze with her ‘cause she’s rich.”

“Yeah, but she said she--!”

“We can hear you,” Goten interrupted. He blinked up at them as if they could get him out of the slammer for good behavior, if only he was cute enough. And he was cute enough.

Sharpener looked between the boys, and then Gohan, and then Videl, and then smacked his orange helmet in between his hands. This was finally a night that Sharpener had wanted to spend together, just the three of them, like it was back before all this weirdness with that stupid superhero and everything else that had dragged Videl away from them in the first place. The party wasn’t what was important- what was important was that they were with Videl.

But if she didn’t want to, well, it didn’t matter.

“Aw, fine. Videl, just go with him. It’s your Halloween and you should spend it how you want.” He turned around and strode to the door, with more heat fueling his footsteps than he wanted to admit to. But it hurt, even so.

Especially since all this trouble was over new kid nobody Gohan, who Videl barely knew.

“Um,” Videl’s voice cut through his fog, “Erasa and Sharpener… can they come, too? If they want to?” Sharpener turned around in enough time to see the sideways grin she got when she was embarrassed that he knew so well. “Would you guys… be cool with that? Erasa? Sharpener?”

Erasa’s answer was immediate. “Of course!”

Sharpener looked at everyone in the well lit room, and he didn’t miss how Erasa looked at the two little boys standing side by side and then at him and Gohan. “If they can be best friends, so can you,” she mouthed, glancing over her shoulder and behind herself as if at Gohan. He also didn’t miss how Videl wiped at her arm and took him in with those big eyes.

Sharpener rubbed at the back of his neck and pulled out his keys with a flourish. “Yeah, sure. I got a big car. I can take us to all the good neighborhoods.” He winked at Trunks and Goten. “If you can stand to be around my lame hair.”

Erasa nodded approvingly, and a moment later Videl was running down the stairs full-force. “I call shotgun!” she cried, and grabbed Sharpener by the arm to pull him out the door.


End file.
